


Permission

by vaguenotion



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Non-Sexual Assault, Sibling Bonding, brief injury description, hurt!taako, implied intent to commit sexual assault, lup will fight the sun for her brother, nothing too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2018-12-26 06:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguenotion/pseuds/vaguenotion
Summary: She’d been doing this on and off for the last hour, as if daring the men to catch up to them. Daring them to fight her. Every time seemed like a final stand. Here is where I will meet them, her shoulders said, hiked up around her ears. Here is where I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done.But then Taako would grab her hand, and she would turn and see the bruising on his throat, the blood drying on his brow, the tear in his shirt. And she would grip his hand in hers and together they would keep running.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A memory from when Lup and Taako were young. Long before they joined the academy on their home world, and longer still before their century abroad. They belonged to several caravans in their earlier years. Some of those stints ended on worse terms than others.

It was a beautiful place to be hunted, all things considered. From their vantage point on the bald hillside, the entire valley rolled out away from them. Sloping fields, sewn neat with crops; acres of wooded hills full of chirping birds and dewy ferns; a thin swath of morning fog drifting in the valley below. It would have been a nice thing to wake up to, the damp air cool with the promise of a hot day to come. They would have stretched and rolled up their bedding and stolen some vegetables from one of the farms below. Only enough to feed them, not enough to be noticed. These days, that was as close to doing the right thing as they got.

But with the men behind them, the scene offered no comfort.

“We’ve gotta move, Lup,” Taako pleaded, pivoting to watch his sister stop-- _again_ \--and glare behind them. She’d been doing this on and off for the last hour, as if daring the men to catch up to them. Daring them to fight her. Every time seemed like a final stand. _Here is where I will meet them_ , her shoulders said, hiked up around her ears. _Here is where I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done_.

But then Taako would grab her hand, and she would turn and see the bruising on his throat, the blood drying on his brow, the tear in his shirt. And she would grip his hand in hers and together they would keep running.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen like this.

The caravan--a band of travellers headed toward the ocean, many of them carrying lofty dreams of finding gold in the Sundarin Hills and striking it rich--was a big one. It had been hospitable at first, moreso than some and less so than others. Taako and Lup and joined up with it a few weeks back. To cook and to fix things and to stay out of the way.

And when one of the men had started to make aimless conversation with Taako, he hadn’t thought much of it. He lied about where he and his sister came from as easily as if he were breathing. Oh, we’re from the forgotten hills. No, this is only our second caravan. Yes, our parents were travellers. Oh, yes, quite tragically I’m afraid, the bandits attacked so suddenly. No, we escaped into the night.

All lies. But the man kept asking, kept trying to “get to know” him. Taako had learned enough now to be weary, and when Lup whispered to him in the dead of night, asking about the man, if they had to leave--Taako had said no.

Because it was a dangerous road to the coast, and they were safer in the caravan than on their own. He didn’t want to leave yet, not if there was still food for them to eat, shelter at night, safety in numbers. 

Neither of them suspected that more than one of the men were in on it. The one was only a messenger, relaying Taako’s lies to his companions. _They’re alone. No connections to other caravans, no parents looking for them. Vulnerable._

One evening, Taako had been cooking a stew for the group in a wagon parked along the edge of the encampment. The man came to talk to him again. Had seemed friendly enough. Had cut off a large chunk of bread and some cheese, gave them to Taako. _Don’t worry about it_ , the man had said. _You work awful hard for us. You’ve earned it_.

Taako had looked at the offer warily. Wondered, not for the first time, that if the man were a woman, would he still be so uncomfortable?

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” the man had said, his voice changing, lowering, “go ahead.”

And he’d tucked a curl of Taako’s hair behind his ear.

Taako’s thin, nimble fingers found the thick callused one beside his face and _bent_. He didn’t remember making the decision to break the man’s finger. The crack, the snap, the howl of surprise and pain from the man. Taako had wheeled back, wooden spoon at the ready. For some reason, he’d anticipated a moment to figure out his plan. He thought the man would be caught off guard, would stand there for a few precious seconds while Taako figured out his escape plan.

He hadn’t. The man recovered quickly, almost immediately, almost like he knew what the risk was of touching Taako and had been anticipating it. He moved faster than Taako thought he could and grabbed him around the neck.

Somewhere in the struggle--in Taako’s kicking and thrashing, in the man’s raining fist, the spittle on his lip as he pinned the young elf down and began to list off how he would be punished--two more arrived. Two of the men who had been in league with him.

_Humans_ , Lup would say for a long number of years afterward, _are more violent in packs than wolves or demons._  

Taako knew some magic. Enough to light fires, to refresh wilted herbs, to impress people into letting them join caravans. He held out a palm in desperation and pressed it to the man’s chest, pushing as much heat into his fingertips as he could. The man howled, and released Taako’s throat. He coughed and gasped and curled to the side.

“You little shit,” the man snarled. Then, to his companions, “Grab his ankles. We’ll take what we want.”

Taako pushed his hands forward again, palms burning bright with heat, but huge hands grabbed his thin wrists, pushed them down and away. Taako writhed and kicked and, through a crushed throat, tried to scream.

When Lup came crashing into the wagon, she didn’t pause to assess. She didn’t need those few precious seconds that Taako did. She drove a knife into the man closest to her, the blade slipping into his lower back with ease. As he curled back in shock and pain, she shoved him against the second, and then with a flaming palm, grabbed the side of the cauldron Taako had been cooking in, and yanked it over. Boiling stew spilled down on the first aggressor, the man with the broken finger.

Lup pulled Taako through the howling confusion. He could feel the stew burn where it splattered against his shins as he stumbled after her, but he didn’t stop to address it. They tumbled out onto the cool dirt. People were looking over now, stalled with confusion. Not yet reacting. Finally, here were those precious few seconds that Taako had hoped for earlier, and Lup shoved through them. She rammed herself, full force, into an orc woman carrying a travel bag, and scooped it up when it was dropped. She grabbed up Taako’s hand again, her eyes burning with rage, and took off running into the trees. He stumbled along, keeping up only by the grace of her grip.

Those first few hours were terrifying. The distant cry of men in their wake, dogs barking, pursuing. Lup never slowing down or hesitating as she led them deep into the forest. She allowed them a chance to rest only when the cries were so distant that they could barely hear them, and even then, it was more to assess the damage than to regain any strength.

She saw for the first time the bruising around his throat, the split eyebrow, the purpling cheekbone. The burning on his shins was her doing, and her face twisted when she saw it. She led him into a shallow creek, just to stand in the cool water.

And while Taako cried against her shoulder, Lup looked back the way they had come, her chest heaving, her eyes bright with anger. Had it been up to her, she would have remained planted in that creek. She would have met the men there and fought to avenge her brother’s abuse.

But Taako took her hand again, and they continued on.

They were into their third day now, upon the misty hillside. As the sun began to fill the world, it was possible to pretend that they had just woken up. That their shaking muscles and aching feet were due to their just rising, rather than having not stopped once to properly rest. They crossed into the meadowy hillside and stumbled until they reached a boulder, standing proudly from the tall golden grass. Lup turned and leaned her back against it, tilting her face to the early morning sun. The bag she’d stolen from the orc women slumped off of her shoulder and hit the ground with a cluttered thump.

They were damp and shivering from their night in the woods. Taako resisted the urge to curl against her side; it had been long enough now that he was equal parts ashamed and angry.

Condemnation burned on the tip of his tongue, but he forced it back. To be simultaneously angry at Lup and wanting to hide against her was too much after thirty six hours of running. Instead, he limped around the boulder, letting her have her moment’s peace.

“They can’t still be chasing us,” Lup’s disembodied voice reasoned. “We’re not that important.”

Taako didn’t respond. He rounded the other side of the boulder, feeling unnervingly alone without his sister in sight. Down the slope of the hill, on the shadowy side of the rock, the ground dipped further than expected. Taako came to a stop on unsteady feet, and peered down into an opening beneath the boulder. In the shadow of the stone, it was nearly invisible; he had only found it because he was so close to the rock. He turned his eyes out over the field and cautiously picked his way into the grass. When he turned back after several yards, there was no sign of the small alcove.

He found Lup still in the sun. In the few seconds before she noticed him, she held her hands against her face. He saw her shoulders shake, her spine curl ever so slightly inward as she struggled through whatever emotion had gripped her.

Taako stood quietly and watched. The anger left him all at once as he realized Lup had more reason to be angry with him than he did with her.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, leaning against the rock for support. Lup took a quick, deep breath and stood upright, pushing away from the boulder. She turned to look at him directly.

“What did they do? You were just making dinner. Why would they hurt you?”

He dropped his eyes. Looked away over the valley below, full of places to hide, opportunities to disappear.

“Taako,” Lup snapped, demanded, pleaded, and he flinched, but not for fear of her reaction. 

“He touched my hair. And I… I don’t know.”

Lup’s face strained. “You don’t know?”

In occurred to him that she was assuming the worst. That the man had done more than just tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. Panic fluttered in his stomach, the need to clarify suddenly urgent.

“He touched my hair and I broke his finger. And he attacked me. I’m sorry, Lup, if I had--I didn’t mean for things to get so-, and then they did, and-, I’m sorry I just--”

Lup’s shoulders slumped, if only a fraction of an inch. “He looked at you like a predator,” she said, her voice thick with anger not directed at him. “We should have left sooner.”

A bit of his own anger flared back. They were too tired for this. “It was our safest route to the coast. If I had just dealt with it we would still--" 

“ _Taako_ ,” Lup snapped, so suddenly and fiercely that her brother flinched.

Then, finally, he saw it. After three days, there were suddenly and finally tears in her eyes.

“I’m glad,” she said, her voice warbling under the strain of trying to keep the tears back. “I’m glad you broke his fucking finger. I wish you’d broken his fucking _hand_ . Don’t _ever_ let anyone-- Taako, don’t just let anyone do that to you, it’s not…” The first tears broke free. Taako stood stock still. “It’s not worth it!”

Then the dam crumbled, and Lup pressed the heels of her palms back against her eyes, and Taako was broken from his motionless trance. He caught her in his arms as she curled downward toward the ground. Her arms circled around his middle and together, in the damp grass, they held one another and allowed themselves to be vulnerable.

After some time, Lup pulled herself together. She seemed calmer now, if not thoroughly exhausted, and her arms around her brother felt stronger than before. Taako looked over her shoulder, up toward the trees they had stepped out of not long before. A familiar and ceaseless panic stirred in him, that at any moment human men might emerge from the shadowy trees and run at them. And they were too weak now, too exhausted to flee, to fight.

“We should hide,” he said into his sister’s hair. She drew a long breath and nodded, finally leaning away from him.

“Yeah. Maybe down in the valley a bit? We could keep going. Just a little further.”

The thought of standing and continuing on sounded almost as bad as being found. Taako shook his head. “The leeward side of the boulder has a small den beneath it. You can’t see it from the field and there’s nothing living in it.”

Lup sighed, and then nodded, and then sighed again. “Rabbits in a rabbit hole,” she said miserably. Taako’s ears drooped. He hadn’t thought to make the comparison.

“It’s better than more walking,” he said. Lup just nodded, too tired to disagree.

They picked themselves up and limped to the other side of the boulder. Beneath the stone, the earth was hard-pressed and a little dusty, but dry and dark. Lup pulled the scratchy bedroll from the top of the pack and crawled in to spread it out in the small space. Taako fished inside and found two large tunics that they could easily bury themselves under as blankets.

“Here’s to giant orc women,” Taako offered, trying to smile for her. Lup huffed.

“I can’t believe she actually dropped the bag. It was like tackling a hill.”

“I bet she was just surprised to see your scrawny ass lunging at her,” Taako laughed.

Lup gave him a coy smile. “ _My_ scrawny ass? If I’m scrawny, what are _you_ , twiggy?” 

Together, they took stock of exactly what the pack did and did not have. They found a bag of nuts that they shared between them, though it did little to stop the rumbling in their stomachs. Lup gathered a few stones from around the field and created a small wall beside the opening to their hideaway, doing what she could to disguise the entrance as nothing more than a shadow beneath the stone. 

When finally they were confident that their hiding place was secure, Lup helped Taako slide down into the cool darkness. His injuries were made worse by their flight and a lack of rest, and he carefully eased onto the itchy bedding as Lup slid in beside him. There was just enough space for the two of them.

“Not such a bad spot,” she offered, pulling the tunics over the both of them and sidling up close to where Taako had curled himself. “Provided the rock doesn’t fall.”

“Well I _was_ going to sleep,” Taako groaned, and Lup chuckled and kissed his forehead.

“It’ll be fine,” she reasoned, draping an arm over him and pulling her brother close. “I’ll protect you.”

For several moments, they lay in silence. Taako stared at the darkened outline of Lup’s collarbone, her words echoing in his head. 

“Hey, Lup?” he whispered, after gathering the courage to potentially wake her up.

“Yeah,” she whispered back. 

“... I really am sorry.”

More silence. Lup’s arms tightened around him, if only by a little bit. “I’m sorry, too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Somehow, it felt like permission. Permission to finally rest, curled together in their hiding spot, their aching bodies relaxing into the darkness. Permission to put it behind them.

Permission to keep going.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither of them had ever been very good at staying in one place for very long, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no long-term goal for this fic, but I was moved to write another chapter. Felt it needed some more closure.
> 
> NOTE: There is one allusion to past transphobia. It's very brief and nonspecific, but just a heads up.

Lup slept for a few hours. Barely at first, and then suddenly, deeply, like the drop off point in a river. Taako was warm against her, constant and present, and any half-conscious fears of him being somewhere else, vulnerable and unprotected, were calmed by the feel of his breathing.

She knew he could fend for himself. She’d seen him in a fight, knew that when they were younger still, he took punches for her all the time. But Taako was hesitant. He had learned to do whatever he could to avoid those punches. He would ride out a shitty situation if it meant avoiding big conflict or big risk. He would let the men from the caravan pet his hair and stroke his face and who knows what else if it meant they could find safe passage to the ocean, if it meant the two of them could keep eating. He’d take the lesser abuse to avoid the bigger blows.

Lup had grown to be the opposite. They’d been born from the same violence and had walked out with inverse coping mechanisms. Where Taako would avoid and grit his teeth and manage, Lup threw up her fists and fought back. Middle fingers and bruised knuckles and zero tolerance for any bullshit. 

Maybe it made her a bit overprotective. Maybe her risks frustrated her brother. But they always put the other first, in their own way.

So when Taako’s breathing gradually got lighter and quicker, Lup pulled out of her deep sleep faster than she thought possible after their three day flight through the countryside.

He wasn’t really sleeping. Hadn’t been for a while. The corners of his eyes were tight with pain and he opened his eyes to look at her when he sensed she was staring at him.

“Just really sore,” he whispered. Outside of their hiding place, it was afternoon, and the sun was getting hot. They didn’t need the makeshift tunic blankets anymore. 

“I can make more room,” she offered. She couldn’t, and they both knew it. He shook his head against the bedding.

“Did he break something? What hurts?”

Taako flashed her a pained expression and looked away. Lup adjusted her arm where it was draped over him and stared him down in the darkness.

He answered so quietly she had to lean in to indicate he had to repeat himself. He looked miserable.

“My legs.”

_ The burns _ .

Lup tensed and looked down the narrow space to where their legs were lying side by side. She looked back at her brother, desperate to find some kind of forgiveness on his face. 

“Maybe there’s something in the pack,” she whispered, turning her head toward where she had pushed it against her makeshift rock wall. Neither of them were any good at healing spells. They were barely good at offensive magic, new as they were. But they had catalogued the pack earlier, and there hadn’t been any first aid equipment beyond wrap bandages and tape.

“It’s not that bad,” Taako relented. “Really. Just hard to get comfortable.”

“Burns keep burning,” Lup said, pulling the bag onto it’s side and rummaging inside with one hand.

“You don’t have to tell  _ me _ ,” Taako groaned, but his heart wasn’t in it. They were both so tired.

Lup’s fingers found a small jar, and she pulled it out of the bag. Silhouetted against the afternoon light outside of the alcove, Lup rotated it and strained to identify what was inside.

“Spices?” She pulled her other arm free from between them and unscrewed the lid, sniffing it. Tilted it toward Taako’s more experienced nose.

“Tea leaves,” he confirmed, voice strained. “That could work. If we had some thin cloth. Tea will take the heat out.”

A small surge of relief toed its way into Lup’s stomach. She preferred action over just about anything. “Should we use the last of the waterskin, though? Or should we get up and find a creek?”

Taako paused to consider, and in that stillness, they heard the first voices coming down from the woods.

Both of them went rigid, their ears flattening back in unison. The muscles in Lup’s arms flexed as she pushed herself onto her stomach, hunkered mid-pushup with her head tilted toward the sound. Taako rolled closer to her silently.

They couldn’t make out what was being said. A man’s voice, tone more conversational than anything. The thrash of long legs carrying into the grass. Lup felt Taako sink closer to her with each passing second, felt the heat of his palms as he warmed them with magic.

Her anger was quick on the heels of her surprise and fear. Had they caught up? Was it them, or a farmer, or just another traveller making their way through the valley? Or perhaps it was the three men who had attacked her brother, driven by anger and the need for revenge. What would they do? Lup had spent so much of their flight imagining what  _ she _ would do if they caught up. She hadn’t entertained that the men would have the upper hand.

She would have cursed if she dared to make any sound. They were so properly cornered that it was terrifying. They had one way to escape this alcove: forward. If the men found them, they would have no way out.

She evened her breathing, and tried to focus on listening.

There were several voices now, coming from either side of the boulder.  _ Surrounded _ , she thought with a shudder, the frustration at their predicament mounting with each second. Maybe she should just lunge. Attack with surprise. Set the field on fire--the grass was dry from a long summer. That would certain give them the advantage. And if she saw the bastard with the broken finger, she’d take his other nine and break them into little fucking splinters for ever touching her brother--

Her brother. Taako’s fingers fisted into the side of her tunic, keeping her anchored, as if he knew what she was thinking. Maybe her body language had implied as much. Hidden as they were, Taako held onto her clothes with a fierceness that rivaled her anger toward the men.  _ Don’t you dare. _

“-for days now,” one of the voices said, near enough to be clear. “And if he’d just kept his dick in his pants--”

“The rabbit attacked him,” a second, more refined voice clarified. “If the little bastard had kept quiet, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Ice rolled down Lup’s spine. There had been a small chance that the voices belonged to complete strangers. To have it confirmed that it was their pursuers was more of a shock than she’d anticipated.

“We had a plan,” the first voice snarled, country drawl thick and slurred. “I hope they fuckin’ hang him, burned to shit as he is.”

“If the two of you don’t find a new thing to bitch about in the next twenty seconds, they’ll find your bodies right here in this fucking field,” said a woman’s voice, suddenly and terrifyingly close to the entrance of their hiding spot. Lup instinctively ducked down, pushing back to angle herself between the opening and her brother. Her mind raced: three pursuers, two men and a woman. The woman would be her first target, if only because she was so close. If she remembered right, then one of the men had a stab wound in his back. It would slow him down. And they weren’t getting along. A further advantage?

“Can’t we  _ stop _ , then? Shit, they ain’t chasin’ us no more.”

A pair of boots stepped into view. Hard leather things, covered in mud and scuffs. They belonged to the woman, though their view of her stopped at the knees. If she so much as bent forward, they’d be found.

Taako’s grip on Lup’s clothes tightened. He pressed into her, his heart hammering in near perfect synchronization with her’s.

“No,” Boots answered. “We keep going. If they get to the pass before us, we’ll have more than the law to worry about.”

“Then  _ you _ get to be the one to tell the boss that Barnes screwed the pooch,” said the man with the college-educated voice. “If we show up empty handed, he’ll be wringing necks either way.”

“Those little fuckin’ rabbits,” Country growled. “Think we’ll find ‘em out here?”

“If we do,” College said, “it would make showing up before the caravan a lot less humiliating.”

The pair of boots in front of them turned to face away from their hiding spot. “We should head straight down to the creek and follow it. If they send those dogs out again, they won’t be able to follow our scent.”

Country’s voice came closer. “ _ If _ we find ‘em, I’m breakin’ ankles. Especially the little bitch with the knife.”

College scoffed. “How will you tell them apart?”

“Quiet,” Boots interrupted so abruptly that both Lup and Taako flinched. “Do you hear that?”

The question was followed by painful, still silence. The twins hardly dared to breathe, let alone move. Lup braced for what was to come.  _ Set the field on fire, go for the man with the back wound, use up all the fire you have-- _

“Thought I heard dogs,” the woman said, her voice low. “We should keep moving.”

The footfalls began to move away from the rock. As they fell further and further away, College spoke again.

“You know, even if the other rabbit hadn’t shown up, we still would have had to have run. They would have asked questions if one of them was suddenly bruised and limping.”

“I told you assholes to find a new subject,” the woman warned.

And then their voices were too far to make out exactly what they were saying.

For a long time, Lup lay silently beside her brother in their hiding spot, hearts hammering. The sun had drifted further across the sky by the time either of them made a significant move, and when it came, it was Taako, unclenching his shaking hands from Lup’s shirt. 

Neither spoke for longer still as they pulled their stiff, aching bodies from the den and crawled into the late afternoon sunlight. It was hot; insects cried out from the trees around the meadow, and crickets were beginning to tune their instruments for the night to come. They made a point of carefully packing up their bedding and rolling it into their pack. 

Still, neither spoke. Lup stood to her full height and peered down at the treeline in the direction that the three had gone. The tension between her shoulderblades was so great, she thought she may never be able to properly move her arms again.

When she turned, Taako was staring at the side of the boulder near the opening to the den. On a small ridge in the stone, the butt of a hand-rolled cigarette had been stubbed out, directly above the rock wall that Lup had made.

She reached for his hand. He squeezed, without looking away from the stub.

“Where do we go now,” he asked, his voice small, exhausted. Made miserable by defeat. Lup took a breath, and then another, deeper than before. A third, and a fourth, until her shoulders loosened and her head felt a bit more clear. 

“The opposite way. There are farms up the valley. We can make it to the beach through another pass.”

Slowly, he turned to meet her eye. “They were slavers.”

Her grip tightened on his hand. “I know.”

Taako looked back at the cigarette butt. She gave his arm a tug. 

“Hey,” she said, shrugging. “Now I bet you don’t feel so bad about breaking those fingers.”

Somehow, despite himself, Taako laughed. Just once, a bubble of sound that surprised them both. He looked up at her and allowed himself a smile.

“Death by boiling stew,” he said, swinging their joined hands a bit. “I guess he didn’t get away, then.”

“Fuck him,” Lup said easily. “And fuck those guys. They have way bigger problems than us now.”

“Helps to know the dogs weren’t after us.”

She grinned at her brother, who looked down the hill where the trio had left. She leaned in the opposite direction, along the side of the hill, and started to tug him along. 

They walked for a short while hand in hand, before the heat caught up with them and they dropped their palms and spread out a bit. “We could try the lost orphan bit again,” she offered over her shoulder as they moved into the woods. “Stake out a few farms, find the one with the lonely old farm wife. We haven’t done that one in a while.”

They certainly looked the part, as far as she figured. Exhausted, dirty, bruised, frightened. 

Taako seemed to consider it for a time. The last time they’d done it, the husband had taken great exception to Lup’s being a girl. Taako had been the one to fend him off that time, caught off guard as they were. 

“If it’s a widow,” he compromised. 

“A widow,” Lup agreed easily. “Oh, I hope there’s some lonely old lady out there. Think of it, bro: a bed? With pillows and shit.  _ Pie? _ I can taste it now.”

Taako rolled his eyes. “I can make you a pie.”

“Yeah, but not sad old lady pie. That’s the best kind.”

Behind her, Taako fell quiet again. Lup palmed the small jar of tea leaves that had wound up in her pocket. “Hey,” she offered, “let’s find a place first and see about helping those legs of yours, yeah? We can use the rest of the water, especially if we’re gunna be livin’ large on an old woman’s pity soon.”

Taako hummed in agreement, but said nothing else. Lup glanced over her shoulder at him, but his expression was far away, lost in thought. 

“After all,” she continued, a little more pointedly to try and win his attention, “with the way  _ you _ look, we might have a full-on adoption on the table. Pity  _ city _ .”

He only hummed again. They walked in silence for a while through the trees, their bodies heavy and sore. Without the adrenaline of being pursued, it was harder to keep going. Not to mention their stomachs rolling with hunger cramps and their throats dry from dehydration.

Both of them tried not to think about the caravan, the wagons that could carry them or the food and water they could have. From the sound of it, the caravan was headed for an ambush in the pass. Perhaps the men who had attacked had been planted to scope out what was worth taking. 

Apparently, they were on that list.

Lup fell back into step with her brother and took up his hand again, sweaty palms be damned. 

“Hey, they’re long gone, yeah? We won.”

Even to her own ears, it felt childish to spin it as a victory when they’d only just barely escaped. But if it would make her brother feel better, Lup was ready to commit.

Taako’s eyes didn’t leave the ground in front of them. “Yeah,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. “I’m just tired, Lup.”

They walked a long time without saying anything else. Taako’s words clung to them like a ball and chain, slowing them down, grinding after them. Lup held his hand stubbornly. They didn’t stop to make any tea, didn’t stop to wait out the heat. Stopping felt too permanent, like if they paused to rest, they’d never get back on their feet. 

Neither of them had ever been very good at staying in one place for very long, anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t ever want to die like that,” he whispered, as if saying it too loud would make it a possibility. “Completely alone and forgotten.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quiet chapter, with a not-so-quiet cliffhanger.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for the feedback! This story was originally meant to be one chapter only, but I think in functions much better this way, and your comments are very encouraging. 
> 
> Recommended musical accompaniment, once they arrive at the farm: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=Si0m1H2Hmqk#%2303___SONG_FOR_JESSE__by_Nick_Cave_%26_Warren_Ellis_(The_Assassination_of_Jesse_James_OST)

The valley was small, and nested between two ranges that were too big for hills and too small for mountains. Both of those ranges emptied their snowmelt and rainwater into the valley between them, and so there was no shortage of fresh water for the twins and the waterskin they shared between them.

They spent two days passing through the woods like ghosts, making little sound and leaving little trace. With the knowledge that they’re pursuers were headed steadfast in the opposite direction, they found themselves moving slower, stopping more often. They camped in a grove of trees not far from a creek and soaked their feet until they were pruned and soft. They used one of the orc woman’s tunics to create a sort of pouch for the tea leaves, which Taako would soak and press against his shins as they rested.

The more rest they got, the more their spirits lifted. It wasn’t the first time they’d had to flee from something; they had just enough experience now to know that they’d find their footing again soon. And with the possibility of an old woman’s kindness in their near future, they found it easier and easier to brush the morning dew off their shoulders and keep going. 

Eventually, the old gnarled oak trees gave way to a hard-packed dirt path, and with a little pouting from Taako, they decided to follow it.

It was easier going along the path; not having to watch their every step left them with time to consider the forest around them more closely. Taako found himself looking up, pretending that he was very small and that the trees were only weeds. The harmony of insects created a pleasant drone, a soundtrack to accompany their journey. If he really tried, he could pretend they were adventurers.

“I say we stake the farms out together,” Lup said, interrupting his daydreaming. “Instead of apart. Two heads are better than one, or something.”

Taako felt momentarily bad for letting his mind wander. Lup wasn’t allowing herself the same luxury, and maybe that’s why they had made it so far without being caught. He cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” he said, processing her suggestion and shuddering at the thought of being alone again. “Besides, it’s better if we can watch each other’s backs.”

“Exactly.”

“But can we  _ please _ gets some carrots or something from the first farm we pass?”

“Oh, honestly? I’m thinking of taking a chicken.”

Taako laughed but shook his head. “Chickens are too much work. And they scream.”

“Fine. A cow, then.”

“Lup,” he laughed, rolling his eyes. She caught up with him, the path widening so that they could walk side by side. 

“What? Shit, we’ve had berries? Mushrooms? Half-rotted apples from that shitty abandoned orchard? I want  _ meat _ . Girl’s gotta keep up her strength, know what I mean?”

“I want  _ pie _ ,” Taako sighed. “You mentioned it two days ago and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Lup stuck out her tongue. “You say that, and all I can taste is those rotted out apples.”

“I told you to cut the rotten parts  _ off _ , it’s not the apple’s fault if you’re an animal.”

Ahead, they could see the trees parting further before coming to an abrupt end at the edge of a field. With their eyes and stomachs set on gathering food, they eased to the side of the road and passed into the undergrowth again. They had practice at pinching from farms; it was never a good idea to stroll right in from the road where any farmer’s dog would immediately see you.

They crouched at the treeline and looked out over the scene. It took a few moments to process what lay before them.

It was a farm, there was no doubt about that. The question was  _ when _ it was a farm. The fields were choked with weeds; blackberry vines spilled out of the forest along the eastern border of the property, meandering across the open space without anything to stop them. There was a barn, with paint so faded that the only hints of red were tucked up under the overhang of the roof where weather and sun hadn’t completely worn it away. The roof of the barn was hardly that at all--it had caved in long ago, more blackberry vines swarming the structure and spilling in through where the roof once stood.

The field was zig-zagged with old rotting fencing that eventually led their eyes to the farmhouse. It was in better shape than the barn, but had also been swallowed by vines. The windows were unshuttered but dark. Stubbornly, the laundry line was still stretched from the house to its post, creating a bridge for ivy to get from one point to the next. They could see a single sheet, left out on the line, made moldy by long-term exposure to the elements.

“Abandoned?” Lup whispered. Somehow, the scene demanded quiet in the same way a graveyard did.

Taako shifted, holding his arms close. “I don’t know. We should keep going.”

“But we could stay here,” Lup said easily, brushing off her brother’s hesitation. “If it’s empty. Besides, there might be food inside.”

“Or someone could be living there,” Taako whispered, a little too fiercely. “Hell no. Taako’s good out here.”

Lup rolled her eyes and nudged his shoulder. “Dude, who would be living here? No one has gone in or out of that house in years. You can’t even see the front door, the porch is so covered!”

“All the more reason to keep going,” Taako shot back. “This is where people get  _ murdered _ .”

‘“Don’t be a wad,” Lup whispered. Then she stood up and started walking with purpose toward the house.

Taako hissed her name, and then repeated it louder and with more conviction, but she continued her long stride. He swore, and swore again, and scrambled after her.

The field was lumpy from gopher hills and buckled earth from successive winter thaws. He stumbled over it until he caught up with his sister, who only gave him a coy grin. 

“This isn’t funny,” he hissed, “what if someone’s in there?”

“Just trust me,” she said. “Okay?”

He glared at her, stumbled over the remains of a toppled scarecrow, and turned to glare at her again. “Fine,” he said, after a few beats of silence. “We’ll check it out. But I’m  _ not _ sleeping in some creep-ass haunted house.”

Lup shrugged, grinning like it was no skin off her nose.

They stopped at the fence post where an old gate hung on one hinge. Both of them looked up at the jungle of vines before them, impassable except for a small gap where the steps up to the porch weren’t entirely broken. 

The house loomed tall and dark over their heads. Both of them stared up at the attic window, half-expecting a face to appear in the blackness inside.

Lup glanced over and realized both of them had their ears pinned back. She cleared her throat and made a show of pushing up her sleeves.

“Come on, this place is abandoned as hell. Let’s check it out.”

Taako gave her a sideways look as if to say  _ I will never forgive you for this _ . She grinned and pushed the gate open.

Or rather, pushed the gate over, because the hinge creaked and snapped with almost no effort and the thing flopped into the weeds on the other side with a dull thump. The twins flinched. Lup was quick to smother her unease, if only to show her brother that she wasn’t scared.

Together, they crept into the small yard, passed the moldy sheet that hung stiff and greening on the old wire laundry line. They stepped over a rusted rake, both considering and deciding against making a joke about stepping on it. The vines that choked the porch offered an opening just big enough for them to crawl through. 

Taako made a point of complaining about every single thorn that scraped him, but once they were back on their feet on the porch, they fell silent.

There wasn’t a sound coming from the house. The front door was open--never closed by whoever had last gone through it. The old screen door was still shut, a squirrel-sized hole chewed in the bottom corner. The wood beneath their feet groaned and protested each step they took, announcing their presence to whoever--or whatever--was inside.

Taako fought the urge to grab at his sister’s shirt. Lup took a deep breath and pulled the creaking screen door open.

She leaned in, and hesitated, and cleared her throat. “Hello?”

Silence. Lup stepped into the house. After a moment of… prayer? Vengeful oath-taking? Fervent internalized swearing? Taako followed.

Despite the stink of animal and mildew, despite the thick dust and moldy buildup and buckled floorboards, the house looked untouched. The walls were adorned with small paintings and old yellowed photographs. The furniture, all outdated, sat in the exact positions they had been arranged in when the house was occupied. Eerily, a teacup sat in its saucer beside an old reaching chair, a book still dog-eared on the arm.

In the darkness of the house, columns of sunlight pierced their way through vines and grimy windowpanes, illuminating dust modes and the odd square of color where they landed. Little trails of rat droppings wound their way along the edges of the walls. By the old hearth in the parlor, Lup found owl pellets. In the kitchen, Taako found cabinets full of dishes and a pantry full of dusty, dissolved breads and biscuits. 

Further behind them, though, he found foggy jars full of preserved fruits. He tucked a few of them into the crook of his arm and went back into central hall of the house.

“It’s like they just… left,” Lup said, her voice careful and quiet. She craned her neck up the staircase, which rose into perfect darkness. “Do you think there’s a body upstairs?”

“I think I sure as shit don’t want to find out,” Taako replied, his voice flat with impatience. His sister had already put a strain on what he was willing to tolerate. “I found food.”

This got her attention. She looked to the jars that he had cradled against his chest and pulled a face. “Are they still good?”

“Should be,” he replied, setting them down one at a time on a small vanity that stood in the hallway. He chose the least dusty of the four of them and (with more effort than he wanted to admit) cracked the lid open. 

The smell of peaches filled the air between them. Both of them leaned toward it hungrily, mouths watering. The slop inside had vaguely identifiable shapes in it, chunks of fruit that hadn’t been fully mashed. Jams and pie fillings, it looked like. Taako tilted the jar toward Lup, who wiped her fingers uselessly on her shirt before reaching into the jar and carefully plucking a slimy chunk from inside.

She braced herself, and popped it into her mouth. For a moment, she looked revolted at the texture, but her features smoothed quickly to relief once the taste registered.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, her words awkward around the food, “it’s still good.”

Taako grinned, thrilled at his discovery, and tucked his own fingers into the jar to try some. Lup plucked up a second jar and opened it easier than Taako had.

They tapped their jars together and tucked in, eating the larger fruit bits with their fingers and slurping the jam down right from the jar. Both of them were grinning and giggling at their good fortune.

About half-way into her jar, Lup turned her eyes back to the stairs. “I say we go up.”

Taako peered into the darkness and took a breath to steady himself. He hated to admit it, but Lup’s boldness had awarded them something to eat. Maybe they would find something useful up there.

“Fine,” he relented, “but you go first.”

Lup was already moving toward the staircase. She tested the bottom step with her weight, and repeated the motion with each step she climbed. As the two of them ascended away from the scarce afternoon light from outside, she lifted one hand and summoned a small bit of flame.

The staircase was lined with more frames, portraits and cameos and framed letters with ink too faded to read. The steps groaned beneath them but held fast. At the top, they discovered a narrow hallway that offered four doors, only one of which was closed.

The first two were wide open. Inside were beds covered in dusty quilts and vanities covered in dusty lace and embroidered pillows with blocky images of farm life. They looked undisturbed, the furniture slightly more dated than what they’d found downstairs. Childhood bedrooms left in perfect condition, a memorial to the children who had grown up and left the farm.

The third door was closed. With a great deal of silent arguing, Taako stepped forward to try the handle. After all, Lup’s hands were full--one holding her jam lunch, the other licked with flames. He braced himself, and turned the handle.

Bathroom. Old poultice jars that had long since dried up and lost their stink were littered around the room, but it looked about as well-kept as the rest of the house. The tub was a scummy mess, run brown with rust from a leaking faucet.

That left the fourth door, which stood open only about a foot. The two moved toward it. This was the last chance to find a living thing in the house beside them, and their hearts were hammering. 

Slowly, Taako nudged the door opened, and Lup leaned her flaming hand into the room. The gesture was unnecessary; sunlight was splitting through the window and cutting across an old rug on the floor. 

At a glance, the room didn’t offer anything interesting. It had clearly been more lived-in than the other two bedrooms, but it was also obvious that it hadn’t seen use in a long time. It wasn’t until their eyes wandered to the large bed that they both went very still.

What was left of an old man lay just beneath the covers. The corpse was dry and shriveled, several years passed rot, with one arm lying on top of the quilt. 

For a long time, the twins stood in the doorway and watched the shell of the old farmer. It wasn’t the first body they had seen, but there was something surreal about the peace in which they found this one. The old man had died, and his farm had died with him, and now years later two young elves with the same face had finally found him.

“He must have died in his sleep,” Lup whispered. 

Beside her, Taako shuddered, noticeably enough for Lup to look away from the body at him. His arms were tucked close to him, his shoulders up to his ears. “I don’t ever want to die like that,” he whispered, as if saying it too loud would make it a possibility. “Completely alone and forgotten.”

Something pulled painfully in Lup’s chest. They were no strangers to how empty the world could be. She set down her jar on a small table beside the door and put the fire out on her hand so that she could wrap her arms around Taako’s shoulders.

“Well, that’s the handy thing about there being two of us,” she whispered, lifting her chin so he could tuck his head under it. “We’ll always have each other.”

Taako looped his arms around her middle and continued to stare at the old farmer. Lup glanced toward the window, her words echoing in her head. The boots of that woman, the cigarette stubbed out on the rock just about their hiding spot, the image of Taako’s bruised throat all flashed in her mind’s eye. She tightened her arms around her brother.

“Come on,” she whispered. “We can find supplies and then head out. Put some space between us and here before we find a place to camp for the night.”

For a few beats, neither moved. Then, finally, Taako took an audible breath and nodded his head against her chest. They released each other and he straightened out, offering her an unconvincing grin.

They made short work of it. A bag found by the front door, rope and a few old kitchen knives, blankets that folded easily, an old water canteen they found hanging on the inside of one of the bedroom doors. More tea leaves from the kitchen, for Taako’s burns. A few valuables from the bedrooms to try and sell once they found a town. Lup found socks in one of the bureaus, clean and dry, and Taako found the rest of the preserves in the pantry. Enough food to carry them to the coast, if they continued to scavenge and steal a few carrots and tomatoes here and there.

When they had combed the house to their satisfaction, they found themselves once again at the door to the farmhouse. 

“We could stay here tonight,” Lup offered, her voice soft. It suddenly seemed a waste of two perfectly good pillows to just up and leave. “Those beds upstairs are clean enough.”

But Taako’s head was already shaking. Neither of them had made much conversation as they gathered their things, and he seemed quieter now after they’d seen the body. She didn’t like how strongly it had affected him, didn’t like seeing her brother so emotionally vulnerable when there was precious little she could do for him. She took a deep breath and adjusted the pack on her shoulder. 

“Yeah,” she agreed, glancing back into the house. “I guess it’d be hard to sleep with a body down the hall.”

Taako glanced at her, but still said nothing. He shouldered his pack and headed out onto the porch. 

Lup lingered. She gave the parlor one last long look, wondering if perhaps they should try to bring one or two larger objects that would fetch them more money. Maybe, though, it was best to leave those things to the old farmer. 

With a deep breath, Lup stepped out onto the porch. Taako had already made his way through the vines again, out of sight. She stepped carefully over the whining wooden boards and ducked down to navigate her way through the vines with the bag on her back.

Then, from the front yard, she heard her brother scream.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was only her, her brother, and the flammable, damnable obstacles between them.

Lup dropped the bag off her shoulders and crashed through the tunnel of vines into the front yard of the farmhouse. She emerged like a shark breaching the surface, all teeth and power and fury, her palms already warming with fire. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light.

At first, she couldn’t see him. Her heart pounded in her ears. The vines, the moldy sheet on the line, the rake they’d avoided, no Taako, no Taako, _no Taako_ \--

Then she heard a sharp sound of distress from around the corner of the house, and she was moving, racing, her feet carrying her through a natural path where two mounds of blackberry vines hadn’t yet met, her feet skidding on the dry summer dirt, her hands up and flaming-- 

Around the side of the house, a man with burns on the side of his face had Taako in a choke hold. One hand was hastily bandaged, fingers held together with an improvised splint; the other hand held a knife against the corner of Taako’s jaw. 

For a fraction of a second, Lup’s consciousness split in two, one half of her focus zeroing in on the bloody welt above her brother’s right eyebrow, the other screeching to a halt at the sight of the knife.

The man was slowly pacing backwards along the hard-packed path toward the back of the house. Taako’s feet dragged in a sluggish attempt at resistance.

Lup surged forward, and the man pushed the flat of the knife into the underside of Taako’s jaw, the blade splitting into skin. Her brother gasped; Lup stopped short. 

The man, for his part, did not have the confidence of a man with a knife to someone’s throat. He wet his lips and watched Lup warily, waiting. He didn’t slow in his retreat, nor did he speed up. Lup’s mind raced--had he been waiting for them outside the house? While they had been moving through the farmer’s things, collecting supplies for the next leg of their journey, had he been lying in wait in the vines? Waiting to see who would emerge first? 

If it had been her, Lup wondered, would he have killed her on the spot? 

“Here’s what we’re gunna do, girlie,” the man said. “You’re gunna put those flames out, or I’m gunna hurt your brother real bad.” 

Lup’s hands went cold, the fire rolling up and off of her palms when she released her hold on it. The man’s eyes flickered back and forth, unsure of her prompt response. Expecting more resistance, perhaps. With every step he took backward, Lup took forward, maintaining a consistent distance. She kept her hands visible, but her posture began to lower, her muscles coiling with tension. Something animal was filling her from her stomach out, her self-preservation trading in for violence and reflex.

Taako tried to get his feet underneath him and tripped himself, sagging in the man’s chokehold and making a pained sound. Lup jolted forward and extra step, her heart hammering. The man swore under his breath and struggled to get her brother’s weight back under his control. The flash of the knife brought Lup up short again, her composure rapidly deteriorating.

The man reached the opposite end of the house. He hunched himself, muscles tightening like a coil about to spring. He licked the sweat off of his upper lip. Took a big step backward into the yard and stopped. For a beat, he and Lup stared at each other, their eyes wild. Taako squirmed uselessly.

Then the man bolted out of view around the side of the house, dragging her brother with him, and Lup lunged forward with all her strength. She could only barely hear her brother cry out over the rush of blood in her ears, his voice suddenly muffling.

Her heels slid over the dry dirt as she rounded into the yard. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the motion against the wall of the house, the open cellar door heaving up and closed with a slam. She ran for it, a shout of surprise and anger erupting from her chest as she grabbed the cold metal handles of the door and pulled with all her might, only to have her arms jolt painfully when it didn’t budge. Inside, she could hear a nervous and disbelieving laugh,  as if the man couldn’t believe his luck at beating her to the lock.

Lup stared, for a fraction of a moment, at the cellar doors. Her hands heated up as fast as napalm, her panic rearing into hysteria for one, two, three frantic breaths. The metal in her grip began to smoke where the rust burned. She tugged again, snapping herself from her fear, and slammed an open palm against the door.

She screamed her brother’s name only once; she could not allow herself any more. Her eyes snapped up to the back of the house, smothered in weeds, no access into the kitchen’s back door.

She was moving, the fire in her palms rising up her arms steadily on her way back to the front of the house. It burned in her lungs, her throat, her eyes, a feral rage that disassociated herself from her body. There was only her, her brother, and the flammable, damnable obstacles between them.

- 

Taako was thrown to the dusty stone floor without ceremony. Over his coughing he could hear the clang of metal, the slide of chain links, and a slamming from outside. A feral cry. His own name being shouted. The smell of something acrid and chemical burned his sinuses.

His eyes watered with it. The floor tilted beneath him, rolling like the deck of a ship, as he hauled himself up onto his elbows. He blinked slowly, but the darkness wouldn’t clear from his eyes. He swayed, slumped back onto his shoulder.

Standing above him, the man was laughing, a disjointed kind of glee. He heard a match strike, and a spark of light somewhere to his left became a lantern hanging from the ceiling, illuminating a burned face. 

The man hardly spared him a glance. He moved like he knew the space already, turning his attention toward the rickety wood rot staircase that led up from the cellar into the rest of the house. He stood, waiting, watching, anticipation holding his shoulders taut. 

_Lup_. Outside still. No? No. Coming in through the house. Taako’s senses were alert with danger before his mind finished connecting the dots, and even if he couldn’t tell what trap was waiting, it didn’t take much to recognize that there was one. 

When he had climbed out from the porch vines, he’d stood upright and looked out at the abandoned field that spread before the farmhouse. The body upstairs had unsettled something deep and alarming within him, but the promise of a journey was quickly covering it back up. They’d have to be resourceful, cunning, sneaky. All things that required all of his focus, leaving no more energy for fretting about death. They were elves, after all, and young ones. They had a long time to go before all that.

And then the man whose fingers he had broken had moved out from behind the moldy sheet on the line. Taako had only managed a startled cry before a rock struck him hard across the head. It had rendered him sluggish and confused, which the man was relying on now, along with the image of Taako being meek and intimidated from when they were all travelling with the caravan. 

But Taako was cut from the same bloodstained cloth as his sister.

Upstairs, he could hear something slamming around. He pushed back onto his elbows, dragging a knee up underneath himself for support. The man was watching the ceiling closely, eyes tracking the rapid footsteps that thumped overhead.

Taako climbed to his hands and knees and closed his eyes tight against of wave of nausea. When it passed, he planted a foot on the ground noisily and struggled to keep his balance as he stood.

The man turned toward him, unrecognizable emotions flashing on his face. Would he attack? Taako swayed, but stayed upright, trying to fight through the spinning of the room to focus on his magics, on what was available to him in this state.

Then, terrifyingly, the man smiled. “Stay down, bitch. Or I’ll put you down.” 

The door at the top of the stairs slammed in it’s frame. Locked, but not for long if Lup was on the other side. The man turned back around, teeth flashing through his grin.

Taako followed his gaze, and tried to see what he was smiling about. He swayed and replanted a foot to keep from falling. In the looming darkness outside of the lantern’s range, the metal handle of the door at the top of the stairs began to glow. Lup was melting it.

Taako’s eyes swept the room. It was a cluttered disarray of canning equipment and old farm supplies, jammed onto shelves along with cobwebs and rat nests. The only cleared surface was a work bench that had been pulled away from the wall to sit beneath the hanging lantern. Spread haphazardly across its surface was the remnants of some sort of firework collection.

His heart leapt into his throat. He looked back to the stairs. The handle was glowing bright and hot now, the center of the door blackening as it was burned through from the other side.

“Lup, stop,” he shouted, his voice croaking on the foul smell in the air, but carrying. “It’s a trap!”

The man turned toward him incredulously, as surprised as Taako that the young elf had been able to determine what was going on.

_“Lup! It’ll blow!”_

The man moved faster than Taako could. A hand clapped over the lower half of his face, the brute strength of the human shoving him clear back into the earthen wall of the cellar and pinning him there. He was so close, his heaving form bodily holding him against the wall, his face right up against Taako’s. 

“Boy, you got a bad knack for crossin’ me,” the man growled, infinitely more confident about showing violence toward Taako than toward Lup. With his mouth only a spare inch from Taako’s eyebrow, his breath came hot against the elf’s face. “I’m gunna teach you a lesson about where you belong.”

Taako kicked, his hands prying at the calloused paw of a hand that muffled his shouting.

He was pulled in too many directions. His head was throbbing, his equilibrium was in freefall, his attention was torn between the revolting press of the man’s body and his sister burning her way toward agonizing doom. His mind reeled, doubling like a tuning fork that had been struck hard against a surface.

From above, through the cindering door at the top of the stairs, his sister’s voice cut through like a lighthouse’s beam at night. _“Fuck him up!”_

Then, several things happened at once.

At the sound of his sister’s cry, the reeling disorientation that Taako was trapped in suddenly forged into a singular point of focus. He let go of the hand around his face and turned his palms against the man’s heaving chest, planting them like defibrillators. Beneath them, crystal began to spread, first through the shirt and then into flesh, spreading faster than the man could react to.

Above, the door at the top of the stairs suddenly splintered inward, not the product of fire but of force, as Lup gave up burning through it at Taako’s warning and instead brought her foot into it like a battering ram. The damaged wood gave easily, and whatever didn’t crumble forward swung in on it’s hinges. The handle, still glowing hot from Lup’s first approach, burst from the rest of the door and fell nearly to the bottom of the stairs before coming into contact with the black chemical powder that had been spread on each step. Sparks erupted from the other chunks of the door and drifted down with painful slowness before finding other steps to ignite.

The man had misjudged the amount of black powder.

The basement went white with light as the powder caught. A concussive blow--more a feeling than a sound--and both Taako and the man were thrown to their left, toward the stone steps that led up to the chained cellar door they had entered through.

Nothing.

Ringing.

Taako opened his eyes. The basement was all smoke. The floor wasn’t rocking anymore; now it was simply that Taako could not tell which way was up, or down. He lay there on his side, eyes flooded with tears from the smoke. Gradually, as the smoke lifted toward the ceiling, the shape of the man began to appear a few feet from him. He was sprawled on his back, motionless. 

Ringing. Ceaseless, consuming, deep in his ears. He was coughing, but couldn’t hear it. His eyes were useless in the smoke, but there must be light, or he wouldn’t be able to see the man. The hanging lantern? 

No. More light than that. Taako managed to prop himself up on one elbow and turn his gaze toward where the stairs once were.

_Lup_.

Through the hot, stifling air, the smoke was turning orange, brightening. Fire, spreading. Panic swelled in his chest alongside the ash in his lungs. What little oxygen was in the cellar was quickly being eaten up. Soon, the smoke itself would grow thick enough, and the fire hot enough, to ignite.

He was going to die. Would this be ironic? To die in a fire? It would be for Lup. _Lup_. Panic gripped him and he doubled over coughing again.

Had the man intended to go back out through the cellar doors above? Escape with Taako in tow while Lup burned?

_Lup!_

He doubled over on his hands and knees and uselessly pulled the collar of his shirt over his mouth. Where the fuck was Lup? Oh, gods, please, no. Lup.

Something grabbed his upper arm so firmly that he jolted away from it. His eyes turned toward the man, but he wasn’t beside him. He was still lying on his back a few feet away.

Lup. Wreathed in flames. In the eerie silence that the ringing created, his sister hauled him to his feet in one pull and dragged him toward the stone steps, passed the man. The man, who lay there, his chest sparkling with crystals where Taako had rooted them into his heart. 

He looked back toward Lup. He was moving too slowly, barely able to see her through the smoke and tears that filled his eyes. She was shouting at him while she dragged him up the steps, huddling beneath the closed cellar door. All he could hear was the ringing.

The smoke was gathering up here beneath the flat horizontal door, and he pulled, trying to go back down, to get away from it. Lup held fast to his arm in a painful grip and yanked, gaining his attention back. She gestured once, violently, toward the man’s chest below them, and then once, violently, toward the chainlink that barred their exit.

Taako connected the dots.

Against every screaming instinct, he stepped back up beside his sister and grabbed the chainlink. It began to crystalize, small sharp patterns blossoming from the rusted metal, growing both out from and into the material. Making it brittle, changing it. Prestidigitation.

Lup reached up, grabbed it in a hand that dripped fire, and pulled until the links shattered.

Taako turned his face away from the shower of shards and embers. He could feel a sudden rush of light and air around him, could feel Lup haul him up with painful strength. His feet tumbled beneath him, barely carrying him the full seven paces away from the hatch before he collapsed into the waist-high grass and weeds.

Without the roar of a fire around him, he could hear himself coughing through the ringing in his ears. Bile rose into his throat and he lurched onto his hands and knees in order to throw it up. He hacked and hacked, gasping, retching. Blind from the smoke that still stung his eyes.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed doubled over there, trying to win the battle that raged in his lungs. At some point, he felt a hand between his shoulderblades, a canteen pressing to his lips. He drank, gagged, coughed, drank more. Felt Lup tilt his head back and spill some water onto his face to clear his eyes.

Until finally, they were simply sitting there rasping, side by side. Behind them, the house was fast becoming a roaring flame, and they had to drag themselves to their feet and stumble away from the stunning heat it was giving off.

At the far end of the property behind the house, they came upon a tree, and fell to the ground at its roots.

Lup’s clothes were a charred suggestion of what they had been. The bag they had packed lay beside her--she must have rescued it while Taako had been vomiting, before the house fire could burn it up. She must have gone for the canteen. Her skin was covered in ash. Tears streaked through it down her cheeks, much like they did on his own face. 

Numbly, he reached for the bag. They were both breathing hard, shocked to silence at what they had just narrowly stumbled out of. Somehow, his shaking hands--and oh, how they shook, so badly he could hardly form a grip--drew one of the blankets out of the bag. He pulled at the remains of Lup’s shirt, brushed it off as it crumbled beneath his quaking touch. He did a poor job of wrapping the blanket around her bare shoulders.

She stared, unseeing, at the inferno of the house. Somewhere in the chaos, her eyebrow had split and blood was streaked down the side of her face, made tacky with ash. Her nose was bloodied. She was so still, spare her ragged breathing.

And then, suddenly, she wasn’t. She turned and took his face in her hands, which were so steady compared to his, and pulled him in until she could plant a kiss on his forehead. She cradled him to her as if he were a treasured keepsake she had thought she’d lost. He held her with equal fierceness.

“I turned him to crystal,” he heard himself rasp, his voice causing a surprising pain in his throat.

Lup made a breathless sound that Taako thought, absurdly, might have been a laugh. “I set myself on fire.”

And then they were both laughing, painfully, joylessly, hysterically. Clinging to one another. For a long while they stayed like that, watching the house burn, feeling the heat that came off of it in waves, nearly unbearable even from the distance they were at. 

“We should go,” Lup whispered after some time, her arms beginning to shake with the strain of how tightly she was holding her brother.

“I can’t, Lup,” he whispered back, cheek pressed to her shoulder. “I don’t think I can even stand.”

She was silent for a moment, pensive, before saying simply, “I can’t either.” 

He knew her well enough to know what she was thinking, and suddenly he couldn’t bear it. “You saved me,” he said, struggling to speak louder than a whisper. His voice was thin through his torn throat.

“No,” Lup replied, and suddenly her muscles started to relax. “You saved yourself. Every step of the way.”

If they had been further from death, he might have snorted and called bullshit. He might have even gotten angry with her for denying her own heroism. But he had no strength left, and was still revelling in the relief that they were both here, alive, instead of cremating in the house beside the crystallized man.

“And who taught me how to do that?” he whispered, closing his eyes. He was too dehydrated for tears.

He could hear Lup’s smile in her reply, and pictured the small exhausted curve of her mouth behind his eyelids. “Alpha twin,” she laughed.

“Alpha twin,” he repeated, his voice drifting. His head was pounding.

“Hey,” she quipped, a bit of strength resurging in her voice, “don’t pass out on me now. I can see people coming this way from across the field. See em?”

Taako made a sound to indicate he was at least aware she was talking to him. 

“Taako? Come on, don’t sleep. They’re farmers. Neighbors or something. I bet they have pie.” 

“Sad widow pie,” he murmured.

“If you fall asleep now, I won’t save you any,” she tried. Her arm tightened around his shoulders. “You have to confirm what happened. They’ll believe us if we both tell them. Come on.”

“No truth,” Taako whispered. “They’ll ask questions.”

“They’ll ask questions no matter what,” Lup argued. “The truth makes the most sense and paints us in the best light, for once. Come on, you’re the clever one. 

Taako cracked his eyes open. A few figures in the distance were jogging toward the house across the old field.

“Taako?”

Lup was forcing herself to sit up. He slumped in her arms. “Taako,” she repeated, more force in her tone, more panic.

He groaned and rallied himself, sitting up on his own. Lup relaxed a bit.

“We never tell the truth,” he said simply, leveling weary eyes at her. She stared back a minute before sighing. 

“Yeah, but maybe there are times when it’s better to be honest,” she said. Then she turned, lifted an arm, and started to wave for their attention. “The ‘distraught innocent orphan’ card won’t be hard to fake, anyway.” 

“Not when we _are_ distraught innocent orphans,” Taako rasped.

“Exactly. Truth.”

Taako sighed, watching the approaching farmers with concern. When they finally noticed Lup’s waving, he forced himself to look back toward the house. The last thing he wanted was more strangers. 

The first to approach was a young bearded man in suspenders and a work-stained flannel. He jogged up to them and decided pretty quickly to take a knee when he introduced himself. Lup did all the talking. The woman that reached them next was torn between watching the house burn and gasping at the state of the twins. More people were coming from across the field, farmhands rushing to help try to put out the blaze. 

It all happened like a dream. Taako said nothing, offered only the smallest head shakes and nods when they directed questions at him. A half-elf man with a scar across his right cheek knelt to check Taako’s pupils, and only his pointed ears kept Taako from resisting. Lup, in her state of shock, actually managed to make the man laugh, but it was a brief flutter amidst the stress.

When the first man moved to pick Taako up, he broke from his trance and shoved him away. He backed into Lup, his heart spiking in his chest.

“It’s okay,” Lup whispered next to his ear. “Taako, it’s okay.”

But it wasn’t. Was it? These adults, all human except for the half-elf man, were staring down at them with concern, pity, wariness. Taako looked for the danger in their eyes, the distaste, the perversion. Just because he couldn't see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

“You saved yourself,” Lup whispered, and he went still, his eyes chancing a flicker toward her instead of the predators surrounding them. “Remember? You saved yourself.” 

_Crystal, spreading from his palms into the man’s chest. Spreading through the chainlink, making in brittle. A power he’d only barely known, suddenly surging from his open palms._  

It wasn’t just Lup who could fight back.

He looked back up at the man, who squat there waiting for permission, silhouetted by the flaming house. Taako hesitated, felt Lup behind him, and nodded.

It was uncomfortable to be carried by a stranger over an uneven field. He watched over the man’s shoulder, eyes tracking Lup, wrapped in a blanket in another man’s arms. Behind them further, the farmhouse was a beacon of flaming light in the growing dusk, farmhands slowly realizing that there would be no putting it out. Most were standing back to watch it burn. 

Somewhere through the trees and over the ridge, another farm--the next one they would have gone to if they hadn’t been attacked--was waiting for them. A meal, and a doctor, and a bath and a bed. Perhaps a brief allowance of relying on someone else, at least until the two of them were strong enough to keep going.

After all, it was a beautiful place to be hunted, this world with all its danger. But soon, they would be the dangerous ones. Taako looked at his filthy, sooty palms and thought about crystal and fire. They would be the strongest magic users they could be, the two of them together. No one would even dare to fuck with them.

The thought hardened into resolve in Taako’s chest. He and Lup would be untouchable, and this thought alone lifted the weight of their situation from his shoulders. It gave him something to strive for. 

It gave him permission to keep going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally at the end of this fic, good lord. Thank you to everyone who has left comments and kudos and filled up my inbox! I wrote the first three chapters of this story just after binging a lot of TAZ content, and it's been really great to contribute something besides my usual fanart. 
> 
> Speaking of, Teramina made art inspired by this story! You should check out these adorable angsty twins: http://atalana.tumblr.com/post/166104499612 
> 
> That does it for Permission. Thanks for reading!


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